This Week's Guests:

• For the past 30 years, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Reza has traveled all over the world photographing people in war-torn countries. Reza joins Boyd in the studio to talk about his new book, Reza War & Peace: A Photographer’s Journey, a photographic chronicle of his life and travels.

• This October, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) published a list of the “deadly dozen,” diseases that are lethal to both human and wildlife populations. Bill Karesh of the WCS talks to Boyd about which diseases made the list and why it’s important to monitor wildlife in order to prevent human outbreaks.

• Keith Bellows, editor in chief of National Geographic Traveler magazine, gives Boyd the inside scoop on National Geographic’s new book, Sacred Places of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Most Peaceful and Powerful Destinations. From Machu Picchu in Peru to the Crystal Cathedral in southern California, this book is a pilgrim’s guide to the most inspiring destinations on the planet.

• Anthropologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Jill Pruetz joins Boyd in the studio to recount her adventures befriending chimpanzees in the savannas of Senegal and to discuss her latest discoveries about their hunting behavior.

• Five million South Africans—10 percent of the country’s population—are infected with HIV. And those are only the cases we know of because most people do not get tested. National Geographic Emerging Explorer Zinhle "Zinny" Thabethe tells Boyd how she’s using cell phone technology to inform her fellow countrymen about HIV and encouraging them to get tested.

• How far back can you trace your ancestors? Spencer Wells, director of the National Geographic Genographic Project, joins Boyd in the studio to talk about the project’s latest discovery: It turns out that most people from around the Mediterranean are descended from the Phoenicians, a group of seafarers and traders who founded colonies all over the Mediterranean until they were completely obliterated by the Romans in the second century BC.

• Rafe Brown, National Geographic grantee and chief curator of herpetology with the University of Kansas Biodiversity Group, describes to Boyd how he used his ears to discover over 50 new species of frogs in the Philippines.